Pa. Nobel winner Baruch Blumberg dies

A Philadelphia researcher who shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the hepatitis B virus has died. He was 85.

Son George Blumberg says his father collapsed Tuesday while at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., to give a speech.

Blumberg worked at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. A biography on the center’s website says he was born in New York City and studied at Columbia University and at the University of Oxford’s Balliol College in England.

Blumberg shared the 1976 Nobel Prize with D. Carleton Gajdusek. They were cited for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases. Gajdusek won for his work on infectious agents including one implicated in mad-cow disease.